Yaphet Kotto

A commanding presence in features and television since the early 1970s, Yaphet Kotto played physically powerful, often intimidating African-American men in such popular films as "Live and Let Die" (19...
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It was a freaky weekend at the box office this weekend as the horror parody Scary Movie 3 helped moviegoers get into the spirit of Halloween--to the tune of $21.1 million*, making it the No. 1 film for the second consecutive week. But sandwiched between the slasher spoof Scary Movie 3 and the limb hacker pic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which came in third with a gory $10.9 million, was a little animated tale called Brother Bear."Brother Bear totally capitalized on a marketplace devoid of family films," Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations told The Associated Press Sunday. "There's always an opportunity where there's a scarcity of product for a particular segment of the audience." The Disney film opened Saturday with a burly $18.4 million, an impressive debut compared to the Mouse House's recent animated features. Although Brother Bear didn't premiere as strongly as the Buena Vista/Disney and Pixar Animation Studios collaboration Finding Nemo, which netted $70.2 million when it hit theaters in May, it surpassed the openings of other Disney pics this year, including Piglet's Big Movie ($6 million) and The Jungle Book 2 ($11.4 million).The lone film to open wide this weekend, Brother Bear was also the only new addition to this week's box office Top Ten. The feel good drama Radio came in fourth with $10.2 million, while the John Grisham thriller Runaway Jury rounded out the Top Five with $6.8 million. The Human Stain, starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, opened in limited release with an impressive $1.2 million, while the re-release of the digitally remastered Alien: The Director's Cut, which boasts six minutes of never-before-seen footage, opened in select cities to the pulsating tune of $ 1 million. THE TOP TENDimension Films' PG-13 rated spoof Scary Movie 3 reigned in the No. 1 spot for the second week with an ESTIMATED $21.1 million (-56%) in 3,505 theaters (unchanged; $6,020 per theater). Its cume is approximately $78.6 million. Directed by David Zucker, it stars Anna Faris, Charlie Sheen, Simon Rex, Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, George Carlin and Leslie Nielsen.Buena Vista's G rated animated film Brother Bear, which opened Saturday, debuted in second place with an ESTIMATED $18.5 million in 3,028 theaters with a $6,119 per theater average--the highest of any film playing wide this week.Set against the majestic natural splendor of the Great American Northwest, the film tells the story of a boy whose life takes an unexpected turn when he is transformed into a bear.Directed by Aaron Blaise and Bob Walker, it features the voices of Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Suarez, D.B. Sweeney and Michael Clarke Duncan.New Line Cinema's R rated horror remake The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, slipped from second place to third in its third week with an ESTIMATED $10.9 million (-25%) in 2,970 theaters (-48 theaters; $3,670 per theater). Its cume is approximately $66.1 million.Directed by Marcus Nispel, it stars Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour, Mike Vogel, Erica Leerhsen and Andrew Bryniarski.Sony Pictures' PG-13 rated drama Radio dropped one notch to fourth place in its second week with an ESTIMATED $10.2 million (-23%) in 3,074 theaters (unchanged, $3,318 per theater). Its cume is approximately $26.8 million.Directed by Michael Tollin, it stars Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Ed Harris.Twentieth Century Fox's PG-13 rated courtroom thriller Runaway Jury fell one position to No. 5 in its third week with an ESTIMATED $6.8 million (-19%) in 2,736 theaters (-79; $2,507per theater). Its cume is approximately $33.6 million. Directed by Gary Fleder, it stars John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz.Warner Bros.' R rated drama Mystic River fell from its No. 5 position to sixth in its fourth week with an ESTIMATED $6.2 million (-19%) in 1,551 theaters (+58 theaters; $4,046 per theater). Its cume is approximately $33.5 million.Directed by Clint Eastwood, it stars Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden.*Box office estimates provided by Exhibitor Relations, Inc.Miramax Films' R rated gory actioner Kill Bill Vol. 1, held steady in seventh place in its fourth week with an ESTIMATED $4.7 million (-26%) in 2,429 theaters (-204 theaters, $1,939 per theater). Its cume is approximately $60.9 millionDirected by Quentin Tarantino, it stars Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah and David Carradine.Paramount Pictures' PG-13 rated comedy School of Rock, dropped two positions to No. 8 in its eighth week with an ESTIMATED $4.4 million (-33%) in 2,786 theaters (-165 theaters; $1,579 per theater). Its cume is approximately $69.1 million.Directed by Richard Linklater, it stars Black, Joan Cusack and Michael White.Universal Pictures' PG 13 rated romantic comedy Intolerable Cruelty held on to its No. 9 position in its fourth week with an ESTIMATED $2.6 million (-27%) in 1,661 theaters (-629 theaters, $1,600 per theater). Its cume is approximately $32 million.Produced by Ethan Coen and directed by Joel Coen, it stars George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones.Screen Gems' R rated erotic thriller In the Cut expanded in its second week to place tenth with an ESTIMATED $2.3 million at 825 theaters (+819 theaters, $2,788 per theater). Its cume is approximately $2.4 million. In the film, Meg Ryan plays a self-determined NYU professor who, following the brutal murder of a young woman in her neighborhood, tests the limits of her own safety by entering into a risky sexual liaison with a detective. Directed by Jane Campion, it stars Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nick Damici.OTHER OPENINGSMiramax's R rated drama The Human Stain debuted in 160 theaters with an ESTIMATED $1.1 million. Its $7,025 per theater average was the highest of any film playing this week. The film stars Anthony Hopkins as a man who, throughout his life, has been a master of deception and self-reinvention. Years later, when he becomes an esteemed professor, false accusations ruin his career.Directed by Robert Benton, it stars Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise and Wentworth Miller.Twentieth Century Fox's R rated sci-fi thriller Alien: The Director's Cut opened in 347 theaters with an ESTIMATED $1 million, with a $2,997 per theater average. In the film, a re-release of director Ridley Scott's 1979 film, seven crewmembers of the commercial ship Nostromo are awakened from their cryo-sleep capsules halfway through their journey home to investigate an S.O.S. distress call from an alien vessel.Directed by Scott, it stars Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto.WEEKEND COMPARISON The Top 12 films this weekend grossed an ESTIMATED $91.9 million, down 23.16 percent from last weekend's $119.5 million. The Top 12 movies were also down 8.94 percent from this time last year when they took in $100.9 million.Last year, Buena Vista's G rated The Santa Clause 2 debuted in the No. 1 position with $29 million in 3,350 theaters ($8,659 per theater); DreamWorks' R rated thriller The Ring stayed at No. 2 in its third week with $18.1 million in 2,808 theaters ($6,452 per theater); and Sony's PG-13 rated I Spy opened in third with $12.7 million in 3,182 theaters ($4,008 per theater).
Go to our Box Office section for recent weekend movie analysis.

Small-town deputy Larry Stalder (you know who) unwittingly (of course) intercepts and kidnaps a beautiful blonde thinking she’s being kidnapped. Well as it turns out…somehow along the way Larry uncovers some dirty business within the FBI and saves the day. Story? Believe it or not Witless Protection is actually a showcase for Ivana Milicevic as Larry’s not-entirely-reluctant captive. She is not only great to look at (even Larry says so) but she plays things so incredibly straight that she manages almost single-handedly to bring a semblance of balance to these lowbrow proceedings. And fair’s fair--Larry the Cable Guy (nee Dan Whitney) plays right into the hands of both fans and critics alike. He is who he is--or who he plays. This is about as good a showcase for him as you’re likely to see. That can be construed deservedly so as faint praise or faint condemnation. If nothing else Larry the Cable Guy plays well with others: Yaphet Kotto reprising his character from Midnight Run and enjoying his biggest screen role in years; Peter Stormare channeling Jeremy Irons it seems as the principal bad guy; Eric Roberts Jenny McCarthy--as Larry’s waitress girlfriend and not doing a bad job of it; and finally Joe Mantegna. OK so he embarrasses himself. Witless Protection marks the feature debut of Charles Robert Carner a veteran of the small screen making the leap to the large. He keeps things moving if nothing else. This isn’t a technically well-made movie. The color sometimes veers jarringly from scene to scene and in some scenes the actors aren’t mouthing the words being broadcast. Other scenes are clearly shot against a blank background (all the better to composite a digital image there later) but the folks who are going to rush out to see this movie simply do not care--and will not care--about such incidental matters. It’s best to go into this with that in mind. Then again it might be best to leave one’s mind behind.

***SPOILERS ALERT***
The Crying Game's pivotal penis scene has topped a new movie poll of shocking
moments.
The scene in question, where Stephen Rea's character is confronted by the
naked truth that the dancer he's in love with is a man (Jaye Davidson), beat
scenes in 1931 classic The Public Enemy and Alien to top Premiere magazine's
new "The 25 Most Shocking Moments in Movie History" list.
The top 10 is:
1. The Crying Game (IRA member Fergus confronts his 'girlfriend's' member)
2. The Public Enemy (The dead body of James Cagney's gangster character Tom
Powers is dumped on his family's doorstep)
3. Alien (Alien baby jumps out of John Hurt's stomach during a dinner scene)
4. Psycho (Vera Miles' character finds her sister's skeletal corpse in the
basement of the Psycho house)
5. Bonnie and Clyde (Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty's Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed
and killed by police in the country)
6. Reservoir Dogs (Michael Madsen's Mr. Blonde slices off a police officer's ear
as he dances to Steeler's Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You")
7. Deliverance (Ned Beatty's character is anally raped by a hillbilly)
8. Carrie (Title character's dead hand grabs Amy Irving from beyond the grave)
9. The Exorcist (Linda Blair's possessed Regan repeatedly stabs herself in the
crotch with a bloody crucifix)
10. Un Chien Andalou (A woman's eye is sliced by a razor blade in the arty
Salvador Dali/Luis Bunuel movie).
Article Copyright World Entertainment News Network All Rights Reserved.

When Alien was released almost a quarter of a century ago moviegoers lapped it up to the tune of $78.9 million--enough to make it the second highest grossing film of that year. Renowned film critic Pauline Kael who wrote about the Alien phenomenon in The New Yorker noted: "It was more gripping than entertaining but a lot of people didn't mind. They thought it was terrific because at least they'd felt something; they'd been brutalized." Now in an era utterly saturated with the genre the film still assaults audiences on a level that has yet to be matched. The story in Alien: The Director's Cut remains the same: seven crewmembers of the commercial ship Nostromo are awakened from their cryo-sleep capsules halfway through their journey home to investigate an S.O.S. distress call from an alien vessel. Unbeknownst to crew the distress call is actually a warning. When three crewmembers leave to investigate the abandoned ship they unsuspectingly allow an alien life to board the Nostromo a galactic horror that begins to kill the crew one by one--leaving only one exceptionally tough woman.
Ellen Ripley (a very young Sigourney Weaver) who leads the fight for survival against the alien has to date returned for three sequels: James Cameron's 1986 Aliens which earned Weaver an Oscar nomination for Best Actress David Fincher's 1992 Alien3 and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 1997 Alien Resurrection. For fans who have followed Ripley's evolution from a by-the-book crewmember to a hybrid half-alien half-human clone it's exciting to revisit the roots of her character and understand what fuels her revenge. The rest of the ensemble including Tom Skerritt as Captain Dallas Veronica Cartwright as Lambert Harry Dean Stanton as Brett John Hurt as Kane Ian Holm as Ash and Yaphet Kotto as Parker seems just as appropriately cast today as it probably did then and even 25 years later the crew of the Nostromo doesn't look like a '70s interpretation of futuristic space workers.
To revisit the set of Alien's Nostromo director Ridley Scott (Matchstick Men) and his team of archivists sifted through hundreds of boxes of film footage discovered in a London vault. From this material unseen in almost 25 years Scott selected new footage which then underwent digital restoration matching it to Alien's newly polished negative. The result is six minutes of additional footage which goes to show how little improving the original film needed. The most palpable addition is a scene in which Ripley stumbles upon "the nest " where she discovers that her crewmates have been cocooned by the alien. But the rest of Scott's additional footage is so subtle that even diehard Alien fans will have a difficult time pinpointing the new material which consists mainly of new shots of the slimy and metallic alien. The Director's Cut also features a brand-new six-track digital stereo mix which strengthens the film's slow but intense cadence with its pulsating beats. But remastered or not the film remains as gripping today as it was when it was first released in 1979.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is California's next governor, but will the Terminator star be able to stay in show business while he is in office or should he wait to return to movies after his political career ends?
Many pundits agree that Schwarzenegger's action-star status helped propel him to an astonishing victory Tuesday. Lynne Luciano, a professor of history at California State University at Dominguez Hills who wrote Looking Good: The Male Body in Modern America, told the New York Times Tuesday that the recall was custom-made for a "youth-driven culture based on first impressions."
Sociologist and author Arlie R. Hochschild, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Times that in a time of economic distress and fearfulness, the actor's candidacy represented a rescue fantasy.
But while fantasy may have helped Schwarzenegger get elected to office, could politics end his career as a Hollywood action star? So far, the 56-year-old actor has not said whether he will maintain ties in Hollywood.
"If Arnold served as governor and did his thing, then if he decided to go back to Hollywood, I think he would be welcomed with open arms in the community, Yaphet Kotto, Schwarzenegger's co-star in the 1987 film The Running Man told The Associated Press today. "He's such a competitor, he could go right from politics to making movies."
But time, according to AP movie writer David Germain, could be Schwarzenegger's biggest barrier. If the actor, who is now tied to the governor's job for the remaining three years of Gray Davis's term, returns to moviemaking in 2006, he would be past the age of a feasible action hero.
As it stands, Schwarzenegger's last actioner, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, has grossed $150 million domestically--barely half of what the second installment, 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day earned.
Schwarzenegger could try his hand at comedy again, but his foray in the genre, which included Twins and Kindergarten Cop were met with limited success.
Some celebrities, however, have fared well in both the political and entertainment arenas. Take Clint Eastwood, whose latest directorial effort, Mystic River, is already garnering Oscar buzz. Eastwood, 70, won a landslide victory as mayor of Carmel, California, in the mid 1980s and served for two years.
"If he makes a good movie, it'll do well. If he makes one that doesn't capture the imagination of people, it won't do well," Eastwood told the AP. "It'll have nothing to do with running."

Title

Played the drug-dealing nemesis of Roger Moore's 007 in "Live and Let Die"

Cast as an inept FBI lead man in "Midnight Run" co-starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin

Made professional debut in title role of "Othello"

Film debut, Richard Roemer's "Nothing But a Man"

Played Lieutenant Al Giardello in the popular NBC series "Homicide: Life on the Street"; also scripted an episode

Feature directing debut, "The Limit" (also produced and starred in this movie written from his story)

Portrayed Idi Amin in the acclaimed NBC TV-movie, "Raid on Entebbe"; received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actor

Began studying the performing arts at the Actor's Mobile Theater Studio

Received raves for his role in William Wyler's "The Liberation of L.B. Jones"

Had another turn as an FBI agent in "Two if by Sea" starring Sandra Bullock and Denis Leary

Portrayed a doomed crewmember in "Alien"

Published Royalty, an autobiography linking him to the British royal family

Starred in the Washington, DC and London stage productions of the acclaimed August Wilson play, "Fences"

First regular series role in the short-lived NBC drama "Love and Honor"

Summary

A commanding presence in features and television since the early 1970s, Yaphet Kotto played physically powerful, often intimidating African-American men in such popular films as "Live and Let Die" (1973), "Blue Collar" (1978), "Alien" (1979) and "Midnight Run" (1988). He emerged from the New York stage in the early 1960s, working steadily in small but significant roles in features like "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1967) before moving up to supporting roles and leads in "Across 110th Street" (1971). His star-making turn came as the villainous Dr. Kananga in "Live and Let Die" (1973), which marked Roger Moore's debut as James Bond and preceded a long run as a popular character actor in such major features as "Alien" (1979) and "Brubaker" (1980). Kotto was stranded in minor-league acting features for much of the 1980s, though he rebounded in the early 1990s as the formidable Lt. Al Giardello on the critically acclaimed "Homicide: Life on the Street" (NBC, 1993-2000). Throughout his long and varied career, Kotto's performances were marked by an unerring sense of gravity, honesty and intelligence, which served him well in avoiding many of the career pitfalls suffered by African-American actors.

Name

Role

Comments

Alexander Bell

Great-Grandfather

Ruled the Douala region of Cameroon in the late 19th century

Rita Dittman

Wife

Rosemary Gayon

Companion

Born c. 1967; engaged briefly in 1994; no longer together

Abraham Kotto

Father

Immigrated from Cameroon to New York in the 1920s; changed his name from Njoki Manga Bell when he arrived in New York from Cameroon; converted to Judaism while in Cameroon; divorced Kotto's mother c. 1940

Gladys Kotto

Mother

Divorced Kotto's father c. 1940

Mirabai Kotto

Daughter

Born c. 1978; mother Toni Pettyjohn

Natascha Kotto

Daughter

Born c. 1966; mother Rita Dittman

Salina Kotto

Daughter

Born c, 1980; mother Toni Pettyjohn

Sarada Kotto

Daughter

Born c. 1976; mother Toni Pettyjohn

Frederick Kotto

Son

Born c. 1968; mother Rita Dittman

Robert Kotto

Son

Born c. 1971; mother Rita Dittman

Antoinette Pettyjohn

Wife

Born c. 1947; Married Jan. 29, 1975, reportedly within a week of Kotto's divorce from Rita Dittman; Separated c. 1988 and later divorced

Tessie Sinahon

Wife

Filipino; born c. 1969; Together from 1992; Married in a civil ceremony 1997; remarried July 12, 1998 in a religious ceremony

Queen Victoria

Great-Great-Great-Grandmother

According to 15 years of research revealed in Kotto's autobiography Royalty

Education

Name

Notes

About his alleged relationship to the Windsors: "Prince Albert Edward did have an affair with one of my relatives. My great-grandfather, Alexander Bell, looks like a white man. He's the real, documented proof that some hanky-panky was going on. It was something that should have never happened. I wish if we had someone from the British royal family in ours, it was someone of dignity and class, and not a drunkard and a whore-monger as the Prince was." - Yaphet Kotto to the New York Post, March 9, 1997